9 de Mayo 2006

Retouching Google Earth for Realism

In one of my 3D model roundups I listed a nice 3D model by 'jpwade' which added details for the Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona. Since the canyon is fairly accurately represented by the digital elevation model built into Google Earth, the 3D model makes it look very realistic - with one exception. The satellite photo of the area shows the bridge which crosses the canyon before the dam. But, since Google Earth just overlays its satellite photos over the terrain the photo of the bridge appears to drop down into the canyon.

Someone at the Google Earth Community named 'gscad2004' suggested the photo should be retouched to erase the bridge. A short while later, 'GregTSL' posted a retouched photo overlay which in fact erases the weird bridge anomaly. After downloading the 3D model above, download Greg's overlay here. Every day, Google Earth becomes more real with the addition of user input. Amazing!

Todas las imágenes de Google Earth capturadas de pantalla son Copyright de Google

Comentarios

I've seen this flat-bridge effect in other 3d representations of GIS ortophographic data. Regarding this correction, it seems from your screenshots that they corrected the bridge, but not the dam: isn't that white layer over the river white flat concrete?

It would be even better if we could change the elevation data. Sometimes, there are alignement problems, or wrong elevation.

See in Paris, at the Eiffel Tower : There's a strange hill, which isn't there... It seems that the satellite noticed there were something high (actually the tower), but because of its limited resolution, the result is a strange elevation.

Another example is at the egyptian Pyramids : the elevation does not match the pyramids.

Enviado por: FlorentG at 10 de Mayo 2006 a las 04:41 AM

Modifying the terrain in Sketchup is one of my all time requests for Google Earth (Although I dont know where to submit requests, this must have been requested). There are numerous sites where the data is either unsuitable for a building(Eiffel Tower) or simply not there (Niagra Falls).
I hope they allow users to do this. Along with textured models and simple animation abilities, this would be the perfect app!

Enviado por: GregTSL at 11 de Mayo 2006 a las 08:44 PM

I fail to see how this is an improvement because now you have a road that dissapears over the canyon. It seems a sloaping road, though inaccurate, is MORE accurate than no road at all.

Enviado por: jeddy at 3 de Diciembre 2006 a las 03:41 AM

Be really nice if the clouds wouldn't hug the ground when you tilted the view point also. This makes mountains in the tropics look like they have a snow cover.